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Blue fist on red background
We lost on November 5, 2024, and I believe it was a totally fair and honest election. We just didn’t have the votes and some of that is our fault. Unfortunately, there are consequences when you lose an election. We now need to go into a defensive mode and work to minimize the damage that Trump is proposing without our attacking each other. We need to analyze why we lost and what we can do going forward to win back many of the voters who used to be Democrats and who are the beneficiaries of the policies promoted by the Democrats.
The election was less than a month ago and the new administration has not started, but they are already bringing back their clown show. As this piece is being written (on November 21), Matt Gaetz has just dropped out of contention for Attorney General. Trump has put forward totally unqualified individuals to run our government agencies, and the sane Republicans are aghast. When asked about Trump’s appointee, Pete Hegseth, for Secretary of Defense, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski could only say “Wow” which she repeated when the interviewer asked her a second time.
As they say, elect a clown and expect a circus and the circus has come to Washington.
Skepticism in the Senate
I believe many of these appointees will not be confirmed by the Senate. Senators Murkowski and Susan Collins have already expressed a lot of skepticism. The Republicans in the Senate can only lose three votes and then the vice president would cast the tie breaking vote. Beside Murkowski and Collins, there are institutionalists who have spent a good part of their working lives in the U.S. Senate and don’t want the senate to become a group of sycophants for the president. They understand the need for checks and balances. Some, like Mitch McConnell, are not going to run again in 2026 and others who will be up for re-election in 2026 fear what will be a strong blue wave midterm election.
Do they defy Trump and probably have a primary challenger or become his lap dog and lose voters in the general election? I’m hoping some of them will understand that by 2026, Trump may be quite unpopular, and it will be a bad year for Republican incumbents. Obviously, they won’t be able to prevent all Trump’s dubious appointments, so the senators will have to decide which ones they will not fight. They need to look at two criteria: how important is the office in question and is the nominee at least halfway qualified.
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Congressional Approval
Trump is talking about eliminating entire federal agencies. These are created by acts of Congress and would need acts of congress to eliminate them. The filibuster still exists for legislation so any major changes would have to be bipartisan with senators working across the aisle. We hope there are enough Republican senators who are institutionalists and will keep the filibuster in place. That would require just four Republican votes.
Then there are the presidential executive orders. These are decrees from the president that do not involve congressional approval. There are limitations on what a president can do with executive orders. What we have learned from Trump’s behavior over the past four years is “sue, sue, sue,” and keep slowing the process down by keeping the issues in the courts. Both sides understand that Trump will have two years to get through most, if not all his controversial ideas. After that he will probably not control at least one, if not both chambers of Congress.
That’s defense. For our offense, we need to seriously analyze why we are losing voters in some of the traditional Democratic Party base like Latinos, African American men, working folks without a technical or college education, and younger voters especially younger men. We need to make sure post high school education is affordable without being stuck with loan repayments for the next 20 years after graduation. We must remove the barriers to the American Dream where a lower income kid can work hard and behave in school, graduate, and get post high school training or education so they could land comfortably in the middle class. We can restore what we had a few decades ago especially if we start fairly taxing the billionaires.
In Wisconsin, we had our victories. Tammy Baldwin won her senate re-election. We picked up four seats in the state senate and where in two years we have about a 90% chance of winning the majority. (only half the state senators are up for re-election every two years) We picked up 10 seats in the state assembly and with a good blue wave election in 2026, we can pick up five more and win the majority in the assembly.
We will get through the next few years and America will get through the next few years if we stay engaged and fight for what is fair.
Louis Fortis is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Shepherd Express.
